Online Poker Forum at Full Tilt Poker

bigslickwily · Pair Joined: 30 Mar 2006 Posts: 34 Location: Colorado

I may be in the minority here and I dont believe in any of the crap about online poker being rigged. The online casinos only lose in that situation not win. They want you to play more not less.

Anyhow,
I find that my online poker can go in streches of about a week to 2 weeks in 1 of 2 directions.
I either get my money in with the best hand and get drawn out to end my tourney.
OR
I get sick cards that dont get sucked out on and go on a terror in tourneys.

It seems very rare that there is an in between. I would say I am a average player who plays mostly low stake tourneys. 5-30 buyin SNG and the 10-20-26 token MTT tournies both Holdem and Omaha.

This may all be in my head but it seems like I can deposit 50-100 and just go nuts increasing my bankrolled amount over 10 times in about a week. But then just go on a crazy downward spiral and lose all of it.
Granted sometimes it can be cuz I get greedy and play some higher stacks games but it just seems like luck is never really balanced. Its an all or nothing type of situation.

Does anyone else experience this and if so have you found ways to get yourself out of the slumps that sometimes come?

One thing that I do now is if I cash a nice prize in a MTT I take a % of the money and throw it back out to Neteller so I am not so inclined to play recklessly with the newfound cash.

Any ideas?

matt2411 · Royal Flush Joined: 07 Jan 2006 Posts: 559

if you have a super high variance you are playing too many hands and taking too many hands to showdowns.

poker is about discipline... gotta teach yourself to respect the game, and not play above your bankroll, no other way around it

deadmoney314 · Posted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 3:52 pm Post subject: bankroll

The two most common problems I find for people who don't come out on top are (1) bankroll (2) limits
(1) Depending on game, you will want a sufficient bankroll to handle the swings that come with variance. You can be the best player in the world, but if you aren't properly bankrolled you can make every correct decision and still lose.
(2) A lot of people shoot too high at first because it is sometimes hard to swallow pride and start lower. If you have to, find a place to play .01/.02 until you find a limit that you can beat--I promise you there is a limit out there for you (unless you are a complete uberdonk in which case there is no hope). Lastly, play fixed limit if you can't handle the swings.

matt2411 · Royal Flush Joined: 07 Jan 2006 Posts: 559

thats not true deadmoney, i am an uberdonk, and i can donate money at any limit successfully!!!! Smile

there is hope!

deadmoney314 · Posted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 4:02 pm Post subject: ...

well duh, it didn't sound like he knew the power of automatic lizard suckouts on FTP. Oops! I wasn't supposed to post that trade secret...

dmoore1998 · Posted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 4:02 pm Post subject:

I disagree with that. He says he plays mostly SNG's and tournaments...you're going to have a big variance if you are primarily a tournament player, there's not really much way around it. Probably nothing to do with taking too many hands to showdown, it probably has more to do with tournament strategy. One thing to consider...tournaments are not the same as cash games...in a cash game I am more than happy to get every one of my chips in the pot when I know I have the best hand. In a tournament I'm looking to take down pots and accumulate chips without putting my own tournament life at stake...this means not making every hand an "all-in" hand. Learn to win pots without putting in all your chips unless you have to. If you are constantly going in pre-flop with an 80/20 advantage, eventually in the course of a tournament you're going to go broke if you keep going up against larger stacks. Realize that in the short run it mostly IS going to be an "all or nothing" type thing...especially in SNG's. The blinds increase so quickly that if you aren't catching hands there's nothing you can do, you can't sit around and wait forever for a hand.

The SNG's are going to be more stable because you're only facing a table full of players, but playing tournaments is just going to be high variance no matter what you do. I agree with the statement about playing within your bankroll though. If you are serious about not redepositing you should be playing for only a small part of your bankroll in tournaments and a little larger part of it with SNG's. I would really suggest limiting how high of a buyin you play, if you're buying in for $100 to the site then playing a $30 SNG your variance is going to be much higher than sticking to the $5 SNG's till you've built up a bigger BR.

matt2411 · Royal Flush Joined: 07 Jan 2006 Posts: 559

SNGs are actually smaller variance.

Tourneys slightly larger variance than cash games but the same concepts apply

Although i dont include myself in the whole equation for tourneys...

my ITM % before Feb 15 was 25% with a ROI of 28%.

since feb 15 I have played in 35 tourneys, 0 cashes. heres why:

AA dealt 29 times. out of the 25 times ive seen flops, my Aces were cracked 23x ( my last 20 times IN A ROW ive had aces they were cracked ). and no im not limping, and yes its a heads up pot, last time was to K3o all in preflop, cracked weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

but really play a normal good game and you should be very consistent, minus some unlucky streaks.

reason why my concepts still apply is this less showdowns you see the more chips you save and you are accumulating chips the right way (you dont want to go to showdowns without a big hand), the less hands you play the less marginal situations you are put in to get you short stacked and out, and a very high showdown % means accumulating chips much more often than losing them.

dmoore1998 · Posted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 4:15 pm Post subject:

Actually tournaments and SNG's are pretty high variance...tournaments especially. Not that you can't consistently make money at either, but the variance is going to be very high. If your ITM was 25% then that means you are negative negative negative (for the 3 buyins with no in the money), then one large positive winning.

You can make money at both tournament types and cash games, but you just have to realize that tournaments are much higher variance than cash games.

matt2411 · Royal Flush Joined: 07 Jan 2006 Posts: 559

for tourneys, like is aid above yes its slightly more than cash games... but in cash games your variance *can be* VERY LARGE.

SNGs where your ITM should be hovering around 33-40% your variance should drop to near zero. and 1 bad beat wont cost you 8% of your bankroll. It will just cost you your buyin.

My variance playing SNGs is nonexistant. I can consistently money in ~12 SNGs per day (playing 30 a day) making about 30% ROI... (more if i play lower stakes SNGs). but the profit per hour is not as great as cash games.

1. SNGs (least variance if played correctly)
2. cash games
3. tourneys

SNGs are easy you sit back and let people bust themselves for the 1st 20 minutes then you start playing... and if you're good shorthanded, its easy money.

dmoore1998 · Posted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 4:54 pm Post subject:

Matt, your variance might be very small when you look at your "daily" variance...but variance for SNG's is still very large, you're just playing so many in a day and treating them all as one session that it averages out to a much smaller variance. Since variance is just the distance from an average that data points fall...your ROI is 30% (average), but your data points must be either -100% (you don't cash) or over 100% (you cash and usually doubling up is the lowest ITM). So the variance for each SNG is astronomical compared to the hourly variance for a cash game. Your daily variance is low because you are playing so many of them and averaging them all out into one data point.

For a more "recreational" player, which it sounds more like bigslickwilly is, or really anyone who's not playing at least 10 SNG's a day the actual variance for them will be quite large when it comes to SNG's.

Also bigslickwilly your variance is going to be pretty huge playing "$5-$30 SNG's" because of the wide range of buyins you are playing. One big win or loss at a $30 buyin is going to cause a lot more variance than a $5 buyin if you are looking at it from a dollar aspect and not an ROI aspect.

bigslickwily · Pair Joined: 30 Mar 2006 Posts: 34 Location: Colorado

Thank you all for the feedback. I realize much of what you are saying and of course not all information was provided in my first post cuz I was rambling.
I am a recreational player just because I have a regular full time job and a wife and kids so I play as much as I can get away with.
As far as the 30 buyin SNG I dont play them often only when I feel I am playing very good poker and am on one of my rolls that I spoke of in original post. I dont play those right after depositing 100 bones. Im not dumb, even though I assume that assumption crossed many peoples minds because we see many dumb players online on a continual basis.
I dont think I have been showing down to much.
I do use the method of picking up small pots by playing aggressive and try to avoid pushing without premium preflop hands like AA or KK until blinds get big and/or I am short stacked.
Once the blinds get larger it makes more sense cuz you get so much more fold equity.

I know that one of my problems is that when i go on a winning streak or place in top 3 of MTT's that I just get too loose with my money. That is one of the reasons that I typically withdraw some of my cash out of the online site so that I can build my bankroll that way.

I guess I play tourneys almost exclusively cuz I like the strucutre and play of a tourney and it is what I am better at.

I am just unable to make the correct change to be an effective cash game player for some reason. I dont know if I am too tight or too loose.
But I do know that I typically suck at online cash games.
I can hold my own in the 1-2 NL cash games in casions but online I think I just get impatient.

Thanks again for your feedback.

dmoore1998 · Posted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 5:23 pm Post subject:

A thought I had as I read your last post willy, and you even mentioned it but it's something that I find myself struggling with from time to time also. Once you withdraw a good chunk of winnings it sounds like you think of the money left as kind of "free money" and maybe you're willing to gamble with it a little more. Happens to me a lot when I decide to make a deposit to a site to play a few tourneys, if I win I usually take out what I bought in for, but then mentally the rest of it seems like "found money" to me and I take more chances than I should or play higher buyins than I should. Not that I have a remedy for it since it basically just involves trying to change your mindset and the way you view it, but you're definitely not the only one suffering from it. What helped me a little was basically withdrawing all of my winnings when I went on a big run, keep it hanging around in my netteller account, take a couple days to enjoy the winning run then depositing a small amount back into the site to play with...I always play tighter and smarter after I deposit if I can convince myself that this is no longer "found/won money" but money that I want to grow.

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